


Ophelia

by fwooshy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Lakes, M/M, Malfoy Manor, Post-War, Time Skips, two lakes in particular
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:34:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27304927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fwooshy/pseuds/fwooshy
Summary: There was a lake on the west side of Malfoy Manor.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 84





	Ophelia

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to warn that Draco does things in this fic that could be viewed as suicide attempts. I don't think they are since he's not intentionally trying to die. But I wanted to warn just in case. Please let me know if I should tag this fic differently!

_But long it could not be  
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,  
Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay  
To muddy death._  
\- Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7

Now

When Draco looked out on the lake his second day back, it was an overcast day in early autumn and the fog sat just above the water, obscuring the Forbidden Forest in a heavy shroud so thick that Draco could almost imagine it didn’t exist. But just because he couldn’t see the forest didn’t mean he’d forgotten what it’d looked like that day when Hagrid had walked out of those trees with Harry limp in his arms.

Draco hadn’t wanted to come back for an eighth year. He hadn’t wanted to return to the halls of a castle where every corner held hostage another terrible memory. He could do with never seeing the second floor girls’ bathroom again. Or the seventh floor corridor. Or Crabbe’s empty bed. Draco hated how he sunk into every memory quick as a sand trap, unable to escape a past of poor judgement and ill behavior.

“Cheer up, Draco,” Pansy said, handing him a butterbeer. She sat down next to him and took a sip of her own, careful not to drip any on her scarf. Her scarf was green and grey. Slytherin, even though there was no Sorting Ceremony anymore, and all the eighth years lived together on the fourth floor, next to the baths.

Draco reached out and fingered her scarf. Everyone their age had taken to wearing Muggle clothes. It’d all started with the Golden Trio, of course; they’d taken a photoshoot for Witch Weekly dressed only in Muggle clothes, even Weasley, who was a Pureblood. Draco assumed Granger had insisted. Surely no one willingly wore Muggle clothes; they were so tight and scratchy and uncomfortable. How could you even breathe when your ribs were wrapped in a shirt two sizes too small?

Pansy had seen the cover and vowed then and there that she wasn’t going to let a bunch of Gryffindors dress her up. Draco thought it may have also been because she couldn’t afford anything new nowadays. Money was tight with the Parkinsons, having paid the majority of their small fortune toward solicitor fees, and the rest toward reparations. But he didn’t mention it. She’d also told him that she wasn’t going to care what the others said about her this year. No matter how much everyone hated her, she wasn’t going to apologize. And that was that.

“Oh quit your thinking,” Pansy said, socking him on the shoulder, “Five more minutes with that face and you may actually drive me to jump off and drown in that lake, end my misery early.”

“You can leave,” Draco said without really meaning it. He leaned back and looked up at the mottled sky. He was so tired. He wished he could disappear. Then maybe people would stop hating him so much.

Pansy didn’t leave. She never listened to him. It was fine. He didn’t actually want to disappear. With his luck he’d end up a ghost, and Myrtle had been so lonely. Dying wasn’t any better than living, really.

Summer

There was a lake on the west side of Malfoy Manor. In the summers when Draco was younger, his mother would dress him up in swimming trunks and they’d ride out together on her horse, his bare back snug up against her bodice. They’d ride past the landscaped hedges and evenly spaced trees to what his mother called the untamed side of the estate. It was here that Draco felt the wild magic the strongest, like it’d been left here, alone, and in the absence of bounds it grew rampant alongside the blackberry bramble, unruly and untouchable.

Draco had never asked his mother about the wild magic. He didn’t know why. They spoke of much else, and Draco had been a curious child. Maybe it was because it was so obvious, what the magic was doing, that they needn’t speak of it, when they could just see it before them in the gold-billed swans, wings dipped in silver; in the ethereal turquoise of the lake.

Now

When Draco walked the halls these days the other students were careful to give him space. The paper had succeeded in painting him a dangerous man, a man who was so cruel in his intentions that he’d the conviction to take the Dark Mark at the tender age of sixteen. Of course in the trials the truth was revealed, as Harry Potter testified of his half-hearted attempts at murdering Dumbledore. “As if Dumbledore could be killed by a necklace,” his barrister had scoffed, “He’s a mere boy, laying traps for a dragon.” The members of the Wizengamot had nodded solemnly in agreement, and so Draco was saved by his cowardice to the very end.

But the papers weren’t privy to the going-ons of a closed trial, so it was assumed that it was his money and not his cravenness that had kept him from the Dementors, and Draco did nothing to correct them.

Draco picked at his breakfast, surveying the empty seats around him. He caught Harry’s gaze from across the hall; looked away when Harry gave him a small smile.

Some days he didn’t think it was too terrible a thing, their distance. After all, they all gave the same distance to Harry.

Summer

Draco returned to the lake that summer after the war as though summoned to trial. Surely the wild magic could not be pleased with Draco now, with he who did nothing to stop the werewolves from clawing at its trees, he who did nothing to stop the Dark Lord from staining the soil black and barren. Still he went, every step closer to his penance, each step yearning for atonement.

But with every step he instead found the wild magic as strong as it had ever been. Flowers bloomed forth from the Earth, every blossom larger and sweeter than the next. Berries burst from their drupelets, their juices sparkling under the sun. The wind even seemed perfumed, soft and cloying against Draco’s skin, gently pushing Draco toward the bramble until, powerless, he took a plump berry to his mouth.

A sweet warmth flowed from chest, spreading to extremities and filling him with an unbearable lightness of being. He reached out for another berry and pressed it to his lips, nearly missing his mouth. When he’d eaten them he took another two, and then another three, until his fingers were stained purple and his belly content. And then he stood up, nearly buoyant in his movements, and found himself on the shore of the lake, the surface an iridescent swirl of turquoise and pink. He waded in without thought or hesitation, still half-clothed in his thin summer robes, and when the lake came up to his chest he dunked his head in and swam, turning onto his back to look up at the sky filtering in between the trees.

He lost track of time then. It was as though time itself welled up stagnant in the lake, with nowhere else to flow. It was only when his mother’s Patronus called him to dinner that he finally got out and left.

Now

“Why’s he looking at you?” Pansy whispered during Transfigurations on their second week back. She had her eyes narrowed on Harry two rows back.

“He’s Potter. That’s what he does. Don’t you remember sixth year?” Draco drawled, spinning his quill between his fingers.

Pansy turned back to him. “Yes, but why’s he staring at you _now_? He knows you’re a neutered crup without your father.”

“Shut up,” Draco hissed. “For all we know he could be staring at _you_ . You had been _so_ willing to give him up to the Dark Lord.” He turned back to the lizard on his table.

“You’re such a bitch,” Pansy snarled under her breath. “I know when you’re not telling me something.” She paused then, realizing something. “You never did tell me how you got your wand back, Draco. Did you two fight when he’d given it back? Don’t tell me you had to wrestle him for it.”

“Miss Parkinson,” Professor Igoharad admonished from his desk.

Pansy took out her wand and tapped her lizard. “This is not over,” she hissed. The lizard looked up at her, confused. And then it transfigured into a vase of flowers.

Summer

Draco knew Harry had come to Malfoy Manor to return his wand when Harry’s stag bounded up to the shore of the lake and called out to him with Harry’s voice. Under the magic of the lake the stag was nearly corporeal. Draco would have thought it alive if it hadn’t been entirely of silver. He reached out and scratched the stag behind the ears, dripping lake water over its great antlered head. “I suppose you couldn’t take me all the way to the gate, could you?” he asked the stag. It nuzzled at his hand, licking berry spill from his palm, and then dissipated.

Draco swung on the back of his horse and rode out to meet Harry.

“Draco?” Harry called out from the other side of the gate’s gilded bars.

Draco unlocked the gate and pulled at its bars. It whined and moaned, creaking ajar reluctantly under Draco’s exertion. He was sweating when he finally got it open wide enough for Harry to squeeze through.

“Jesus, when was the last time anyone’s left the manor?” Harry asked. He was staring up at the gate. It was overgrown with english ivy and creeping thyme and clematis montana, tiny pink and purple flowers burrowing down into the soil, as though it had settled down and grown roots and never wanted to move again.

“And why are you completely soaked?” Harry continued, his mouth still agape. He moved toward Draco as though to take a closer look. Draco caught Harry’s hand as it lifted to Draco’s mouth.

Harry snatched his hand back. “You’ve got berry juice all over your face,” he said, looking away, his face hot. He held out a handkerchief.

Draco took it without thinking. His mind was still woozy. Harry’s words felt like waves against his conscience, lapping at him gently while his mind dozed on. He didn’t hear a word of what Harry said. So he asked, “Want to get on my horse?”

Harry stared. And then he said yes.

“What’s her name?” Harry asked later as they sat in the shade, still damp from a swim. He held out a handful of berries to the horse.

“Misty,” Draco said. He reached out and stole a berry. Harry swatted his hand away. But then let Draco take two more, and then the last one.

Harry licked the juices off his palm. “So this is what you’ve been up to all summer then? It’s pretty nice. I might have to come back tomorrow. I’m more relaxed than after a Calming Draught.”

“Yeah,” Draco said, leaning back and cradling his head in his hands. He closed his eyes. He felt like he was sinking into the ground. When he woke again it was to his mother’s patronus, calling him to dinner.

“I should go,” Harry said, his eyes darting back to the lake reluctantly.

“Tomorrow, then,” Draco said, smiling when Harry lit up.

There was still enough light so they went by foot out from the woods. “I should try and dry off before I Apparate anyway,” Harry reasoned. Draco didn’t remind him of drying charms. He never cast those either. He liked the way his wet robes clung to his skin, weighing him down.

Now

From the castle, most students liked to walk out past the Quidditch pitch before turning toward the lake. From this approach they’d walk through several yards of meadow before hitting a thin strip of sandy shore, from which they’d wade out onto the water half a foot deeper per step. But Draco preferred instead to take the cloisters past the owlery, where at the edge there was a set of steps hewed roughly into stone. At the bottom of the stairs laid a flat stretch of boulder that dropped off into the lake. In fourth year Draco had dived off the side straight down until he couldn’t breathe anymore, and still he hadn’t reached the bottom.

Today he only held out his hand over the surface of the lake, and let the waves lap up against his palm.

“You’re really not going to tell me what happened,” Pansy said from a meter away, her arms crossed.

“Nothing happened, Pansy,” Draco said. He dipped his fingers and felt them drag with the tide, numbing in the cold.

“So you’re telling me what happened earlier was _nothing?_ ”

Harry had happened earlier. He’d sat down at the Slytherin table during dinner and nudged up against Draco’s shoulder. And Draco had leaned into Harry reflexively, as though moving through a familiar gesture. Because it was. Familiar.

“None of it matters, because it wasn’t real,” Draco said.

Pansy rolled her eyes. “The way he’d looked when you got up to leave. I know that look. It was like you’d reached in his chest and torn out his heart.”

Draco stood up and wiped his hand off on his robes. Pansy was still talking at him. “How did you get Harry Potter to fall in love with you? What did you do?”

Summer

Harry came back to Malfoy Manor the next day, and the day after that too. On his eighth day back he came with the tags still on his blue-and-white swimming trunks.

“I’ll get you a pair too if you want,” Harry said, blushing after Draco had pointed out the tags. “You’d be more comfortable out of those robes.” And then he flushed even redder.

“I’m okay,” Draco said. And then he helped Harry onto Misty’s back.

When Harry swam he was always moving, like if he stopped he would drown. Draco thought about telling Harry that he didn’t need to worry about drowning, because the lake’s magic would keep him afloat. But then Harry swam past a lilypad carrying a bloom so heavy each petal curled back and dipped in the water, so heavy it surely could have only been kept afloat by magic, and Draco decided that Harry must surely already know by now, so there was no need to tell him.

“I could do this forever,” Harry said on another day, lying back on the soft grass next to Draco. It was near dusk; the fireflies had started to weave golden threads through the trees, reflecting off the lake like constellations. The air was heavy with magic. Draco could feel it on him, sticky and cloying. He turned his head toward Harry and saw Harry already looking at him.

Harry reached over and ran two fingers through Draco’s hair. “Can I kiss you?” he asked, his question tickling Draco’s face. Draco felt the magic compelling him to say yes, and when he did Harry let out a breathy laugh and rolled on top of him before pressing his lips to Draco’s. Draco dragged a hand through Harry’s curls, opening his mouth under Harry’s and pressing him in closer as Harry groaned into his mouth.

“You’re incredible,” Harry whispered as he mouthed down Draco’s neck. “When you’re around I’m so calm. You don’t know how good you make me feel, I can even _sleep_ these days. God,” he moaned against Draco’s chest, “God, can I, can I touch —” his hand brushed Draco’s inner thigh. Draco whimpered, nodding into the crook of Harry’s neck, mouthing — _Yes_.

The magic was always whispering to him to say yes.

Now

“Malfoy.”

Draco looked back at Hermione striding up to him. He was walking out toward the owlery, to the lake. She backed him up against a pillar.

“What did you do to Harry,” she demanded.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “I was having dinner.” He thought back to it. Harry had sent him half a dozen worried glances across the Great Hall. He was always doing that sort of thing these days; long looks following him out of classrooms, his head perpetually turned toward Draco, as though he were the magnetic north.

“I knew you’d done something to him the past summer,” she accused, “No way he’d actually want to spend time with you. I knew I should have stopped him. But — I wanted to trust you! You know, even Parkinson came up to me? She thought you’d dosed him with a love potion. Tell me. Was it a love potion? Did you dose him with Amortentia?”

“You’re right,” Draco said.

Hermione raised her brows. “I’m right? So it was Amortentia.”

“It was the lake.” Draco looked down the cloister out to the lake. It was inky black. Little waves rippled across its surface, turbulent. Looking at it made his stomach roil. It was nothing like his lake at home. But it still called out to him. He had to try.

“The lake?” Hermione asked, sounding perplexed.

Draco looked down at her. “It doesn’t matter anyway, because the lake’s magic is destroyed. Potter destroyed it. I’ve got nothing to do with Potter anymore.”

Hermione furrowed her brow suddenly in concern. Her voice grew soft. “Are you feeling alright, Draco? Do you need help?”

“I’m fine,” he said, horrified. He slid by her, rushing back into the castle. What had she seen in him that had worried her so much? Was there something wrong with him?

Summer

“It’s like my life’s in limbo,” Draco said. “That’s what the magic of this place is. Time stands still here. And I know that I’ll have to go back out there someday, but here it feels like that day will never come.”

Harry exhaled a deep rumble beside him. “The real world isn’t so bad. I’ll be there with you.”

Draco turned away. He shouldn’t have expected Harry to understand. Harry hadn’t been there when Draco’s father had called him into the library that morning. He’d wanted to tell Draco that he’d figured out how to save the Malfoy name: Astoria. The Greengrasses were coming tomorrow for a formal engagement ceremony, and couldn’t Draco change into something respectable? He’d gotten away with summer robes so far but now it was time to shape up, look presentable, stop making a fool of the Malfoy name.

“Did I say something wrong?” Harry asked, placing a hand on the sharp blade of Draco’s shoulder. He cast a shadow over Draco’s face.

“No,” Draco sighed, willing the magic to wash his worries away. He turned onto his back, pulling Harry down to him.

Harry slid a hand behind his back, kissing his neck. He kept talking. “It’s not so bad out there, I swear. I can show you. You can even try on my new Muggle clothes, for a laugh.” 

Draco wanted him to shut up. He reached a hand between them and palmed between Harry’s legs.

“God, you’re going to kill me,” Harry groaned, thrusting shallowly into Draco’s hand. “Turn over, will you? I want to eat you out.”

Now

“You can’t do this, Draco, you’re mad,” Pansy pleaded.

“It’s not so bad,” Draco said. He sat down and took off a shoe. And then he decided he rather missed the weight, and laced it back up.

“It’s freezing out there on the lake. Don’t you see how many layers I’m wearing? Don’t you feel the cold?”

Draco looked up at her. She was right: he hadn’t noticed. “Two scarves is a bit excessive, isn’t it? People’ll get the point across with just one.” He took a step toward the water’s edge.

“Draco!” She lunged and grabbed his hand. Draco looked back at her, surprised. From this angle Draco could see the snot bubbling under her red nose. Soon it would drip down on her scarves. She wouldn’t like that.

“What are you doing?” he asked, curious.

“Don’t go in the water,” Pansy begged. “Please, Draco. Don’t. It’s too cold.”

“You’re being ridiculous,” Draco said. “It’s only a little dip. Just a refreshing dip. And then I’ll come right back out.”

“Draco, no,” Pansy sobbed, digging in her heels. ““You can’t, not after what Potter’s told me happened this summer. You can’t.”

Draco froze. He forgot to breathe.

He looked out on the lake. It was another overcast day. The lake was as smooth as a mirror, as black as the void. The fog hid the rest of the world around them, wrapped the lake up in a thick blanket. It looked safe in there, under the fog. Draco wanted to feel safe again.

He turned to Pansy one last time. “Nothing happened this summer,” he said gently. And then he slipped into the lake.

He was cold for a flash. And then there was only the numbness of warmth.

Summer

His father had someone lay out his clothes the next morning while he was in the bath. When he came back his entire bed was covered in layers upon layers of clothes down to his embroidered underwear. Draco walked up to his bed naked with his wand out and magicked on the first piece of clothing and made his way up until he was covered head to toe and a few times around in lace and frills and velvet cords. Then he made his way down to the parlour where his mother was entertaining the Greengrasses while Draco was getting ready.

Except when Draco got to the door to the parlour, he couldn’t get himself to go in. Instead he felt his feet move as though by magic out the front door and onto the paths straight to the lake. Perhaps the lake wanted one last good-bye before it became too unfashionable for Draco to visit its wild shores. He could allow that. He more than could allow that.

When he got to the lake the light cast just right on the water so that the cotton-ball clouds reflected off the surface, looking so soft and comforting that Draco waded in before he realized. He laid his head in the warm water, his hand caressing a late blooming lily, and felt the magic sink him down into a familiar nothingness as he waited for his mother’s patronus to call him to dinner again.

But it was Harry’s patronus who found him in the end. It was Harry’s wand that cut him from his waterlogged clothes and hauled his body to shore. And it was Harry’s eyes he saw first when he’d opened his again, coughing up water.

“Were you trying to kill yourself?” Harry asked in near hysterics.

Draco felt the pleasant slosh of the lake in his ears. Harry sounded distant, but familiar. “No, of course not,” he said, reaching out to touch Harry’s cheek, concerned.

“Then what were you doing?” Harry demanded, his voice pitched and terrified.

“The magic. It was calling to me. And the lake looked so comfortable. I thought I’d take a nap.”

“You would have drowned!” Harry screamed at him. “Draco, there’s _no magic_. There’s nothing special about that lake. It’s just a lake, a lake you nearly drowned in!”

Draco dropped his hand. He backed away from him, shaking his head. “No, no, no,” he muttered. He cast his arms out wildly. He looked out at the lake. But it was as though Harry’s words, in their desperation to be true, were draining the world around Draco. The lake faded to a dull green. The flowers grew rotten and saccharine. The berries, even the berries lost their lushness, shirking against the truth in Harry’s words.

“You’re lying,” Draco yelled.

“Draco!” his mother called out, her horse pounding down the path. Lucius appeared a moment later.

The outside had crawled its way in to take root.

Now

Strong arms pulled him out from the lake. “Draco,” Harry’s voice cried. Tears dropped and slipped over Draco’s face. “Draco, come on, you’re so cold. Wake up, you’re so cold, your lips are blue.”

“Draco,” Harry was saying. “Draco, the magic. I was wrong. It’s real. It was never the lake. It was you. You were the magic. I need you. I need you —”

Fumbling kisses over his lips, his cheeks, his nose. He felt a warmth growing in his chest, radiating outward toward his extremities. It felt like the first time he’d eaten a blackberry. It felt like magic.

Draco opened his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> I drew a lot of inspo from [Ophelia](https://fw00shy.tumblr.com/post/633504523405672448/preraphaelist-ophelia-by-alexander-cabanel). I also looked at a bunch of [lakes](https://fw00shy.tumblr.com/tagged/lakes) but I finished this so quickly they haven't all made it out of my queue into the tag yet. 😅
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! 💛


End file.
